Cisco sent a cease-and-desist letter to at least one Web site that posted a leaked copy of an exploit technique against its routers. The technique, which Cisco has been working to suppress in court, was demonstrated publicly at the Black Hat security conference.

I enjoyed Bill O'Brien's piece on new and interesting input devices over at Personal Tech Pipeline. But he missed what may be coolest thing to happen to a keyboard since, well, since there have been keyboards: Artemy Lebedev's Optimus.
When I first laid eyes on this thing about a month ago, I knew I had to have one. Why? If you have to ask, then I can't explain.

The contracts are lucrative but hazardous: Employees at the three existing Iraq cell phone operations have been kidnapped, and U.S. military forces have had to jam service to prevent insurgent cell phones from detonating bombs.

My last column raised as many new questions as I had when I researched it. This one concerns the back-door login that had been compiled into Borland's InterBase code. If anyone knows the answer, or knows someone who might, give me a shout.

Earlier this afternon, I got an interesting email from Bill Whiting, a Linux Pipeline newsletter subscriber. After reading my editor's note -- also availble on the site as today's column, "Analyze This!" -- Bill wrote to suggest that Borland and Cisco might, in fact, have some prominent open-source company: Sendmail, courtesy of a once-infamouse worm that came simply to be known as "The Internet Bug."

The quarterly sport of watching vendor financial results isn't just for industry insiders. These reports are a window into not only what fellow technology users are buying but also the vision and management acumen of current and prospective technology suppliers.

There was a lot of money sloshing around the IT industry last week, with several companies making acquisitions and several others lining up new financing. The buyers were plugging holes in their product portfolios or buying technology. News Corp. bought more than 30 Web sites. Business Objects went for financial-planning and performance-management software. Microsoft grabbed an E-mail-services hosting company. And Broadcom focused on 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology. Meanwhile, venture capital flo

It's possible to leverage many project-management efficiencies without starting a formal office, The Advisory Council says. Also, align goals when trying to reduce product costs with collaborative commerce.

I knew we wouldn't hear much about the usual suspects -- Symantec, McAfee, etc. -- when I set up this week's poll. But it's still interesting to see just how little these products matter to you : Out of about 100 votes so far, just one person says they use proprietary anti-virus sotware on their open-souce desktop system.

Google engineer Larry Schwimmer today announced the arrival of Google Moon, a lunar version of the map technology seen on Google Earth.
This is one small step for Google, one giant leap for lunar location-based marketing.

Despite its unpredictable, frustrating nature, wireless Internet access has become more than just a nice perk available at some savvy hotels. It has become downright necessary to compete for corporate travel business. But based on my experiences with wireless while traveling, there really isn't any reason to rush just yet.

Match ERP tools with your business strategy and chose an industry-tailored system, The Advisory Council says. Also, align network-support staffing levels first with network-management processes and network-planning and -architecture processes, then with technical specialties.

The Department of Homeland Security and E-government are among the drivers that will boost federal telecom spending, according to the government market-research firm Input, which released a study Wednesday.

Companies want to leverage their investments as much as possible, The Advisory Council says, so consider, what are your pain points? Also, how to structure an outsourcing deal so you can cut your losses early if it's not working out.

To learn more about what organizations are doing to tackle attacks and threats we surveyed a group of 300 IT and infosec professionals to find out what their biggest IT security challenges are and what they're doing to defend against today's threats. Download the report to see what they're saying.

Is DevOps helping organizations reduce costs and time-to-market for software releases? What's getting in the way of DevOps adoption? Find out in this InformationWeek and Interop ITX infographic on the state of DevOps in 2017.

Chances are your organization is adopting cloud computing in one way or another -- or in multiple ways. Understanding the skills you need and how cloud affects IT operations and networking will help you adapt.